


Tread softly where flowers lie

by jiunnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Band Fic, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Sleepy Cuddles, So basically, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, just kidding lmaoooo just, lots of them - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiunnie/pseuds/jiunnie
Summary: Sehun finds a certain hyung in his bed, fast asleep. The tenderness that blooms in his chest is a complete coincidence.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Oh Sehun
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	Tread softly where flowers lie

**Author's Note:**

> supposed to be short & fluffy and based on the video where sehun recounted finding baekhyun in his bed making cute sleeping noises

Sehun stumbled into the dark room, cursing.

He had reached out to flick the light switch the same moment that he’d entered, but hadn’t anticipated tripping over an unidentified object right at the threshold. After all, this was his room. He never had any reason to expect anything out of place.

Quickly regaining his balance, he righted himself. He groped around in the dark, stooping low, fingers searching for the offending object. _What…_

An indoor slipper. Sehun didn’t need to turn the lights on to know whose it was. Without having to look at it, He knew he was holding on to one that was striped deep emerald and burgundy, with a matching maroon poofy—what on earth were those fluffy balls called—attached to its toe cap.

 _Christmas themed_ , Baekhyun had grinned in reply when Sehun had made an offhand remark about how eye-catching it was. _It’s not a compliment, hyung_ , Sehun had deadpanned, before being swiftly chased round the living room by a slipper-wielding Baekhyun.

Baekhyun did always have a soft spot for Christmas.

_But what was Byun Baekhyun’s dumb, ugly slipper doing in Sehun’s—_

A muffled, rumbling sound came from the direction of his bed, cutting through the hush of the room.

Sehun froze. There it was agan, as tiny as before, yet completely unmistakable.

He stood still, fingers still wrapped round the cushy footwear, suddenly feeling like an intruder in his own room. Baekhyun was in his bed — and from the sound of it, completely dead to the world.

Treading lightly, Sehun made his way over. The room was almost pitch black, not only because his eyes were still adjusting, but also because of the blackout blinds that he’d installed on a whim a couple months ago, in a half-hearted bid to get better sleep. Mixing with the soft, airy sounds that Baekhyun was making was the gentle hum of the humidifier, but otherwise no noise from the rest of the apartment pervaded the space.

“—Ouch-” Sehun gasped as he promptly stubbed his toe on one of the wheels of his gaming chair. Those darn swivelly things, he thought petulantly, stopping for a moment to massage his toe. Why did things always have such a… propensity to bother him...

_Kkng… kkng..._

Baekhyun was exhaling again. Completely out of the blue, a tender warmth bloomed in Sehun’s chest, lodging there as an inexplicable, bittersweet lump. He swallowed quickly.

Stretching across his desk, Sehun turned a knob on his humidifier. A small blue glow flickered on to illuminate the room, but just barely. He swallowed again, more thickly this time, and turned to face the bed.

Baekyun, head fully obscured by the stuffed dolphin that he was keeping pressed over his face with one arm, lay there on his back. Spread eagle, he was nonetheless securely buried under Sehun’s comforter. Sehun glanced at the feet which had found their way out from under the comforter to dangle off the foot of the bed and sighed.

As gently as he could, he reached down to pry the toy free from Baekhyun’s clutches. Baekhyun stirred but maintained his grip on it.

“You’re gonna suffocate,” Sehun mumbled. The silly lump in his chest had taken up a permanent home there, and if anything, seemed to be rapidly metastasizing. He was certain it wasn’t healthy for his heart to constrict with that much feeling. _But what feeling?_

“Come to bed,” Baekhyun said, eyes closed and voice still thick with slumber.

“My bed,” corrected Sehun, but sat on the edge of the bed anyway.

“—Mm, nearer.” Baekhyun shifted almost imperceptibly, as though making room for him. Sehun let out another sigh.

“I have to go bathe.” He hated even lingering for long in his room before taking a shower first. The outside world was crowded and sticky and needed to be washed off with haste and he hated it. These days he seemed to hate quite a number of things.

Without warning, in one swift motion, he came crashing down on the bed. He landed on his side with a sharp intake of breath.

“What the fuck, hyung!”

He’d been yanked off balance by Baekhyun, who was now freed of the blanket and instead, positively smothered under Sehun’s weight.

Baekhyun’s warm form squirmed under him. “You’re so cold, Sehunnie…” And so he was. Sehun was suddenly made hyper-aware of his own freezing fingers and stiff, clammy feet. Or maybe it was all down to how… uncold Baekhyun felt against him, how snug his entire body seemed to be as it lay sandwiched between Sehun’s and the sheets, how one stray sleeve of his fleece jumper was just, very slightly, brushing the edge of Sehun’s cheek.

“And I could be taking a long, hot bath right now,” snapped Sehun. It was devoid of any real heat. Instead, as he eased himself off the surface of the bed and took a closer look at Baekhyun, the intensity that was absent in his voice manifested itself as another squeeze inside his chest.

Not anger, but not a lack of frustration either. It stung a little to dwell on it too long. Sehun pushed the thought to the back of his mind; he didn’t want to deal with the mess that was his tangled emotions tonight.

But what did he want? In the cool glow of the humidifier-light, Baekhyun’s closed eyes were a painting Sehun was starting to get lost in. And each eyelash, dark and delicate against the paleness of Baekhyun’s eyelids, forming a reel that drew Sehun’s gaze in, deeper and deeper...

Before he knew it, he was inches from Baekhyun’s face, mind blank and eyes swimming with the frozen image of a semi-dozing Baekhyun.

A hand circled Sehun’s waist, followed by the trailing length of a warm arm, slender yet firm. Baekhyun was pulling him close, proceeding immediately to bury his face in Sehun’s neck.

“Why do you always smell so good…?”

Sehun felt Baekhyun’s question as a low, steady vibration against his skin and shivered. Every inch of him suddenly felt too sensitive, too alive. Trapped like that in that stupidly sleepy room, Sehun thought of a lone piece of coal, white-hot, glaring among dying embers.

He stilled, afraid even to draw breath. If he so much as blinked, it felt like he might burst into flames.

“Don’t go, you smell so nice right now. You smell just like you.”

It might have been the way Baekhyun was continuing to speak straight into Sehun’s neck, or the way he was murmuring such terrible things with no apparent regard for how they sounded out in the air, or even Sehun’s own common sense belatedly kicking in, but Sehun found it in him to scramble upright.

“Why are you here?”

That wasn’t the question he wanted to ask. The question he really wanted to ask—had been wanting to ask, for quite some time now—had died on his tongue just as he’d opened his mouth.

“Why did you come in, I mean,” Sehun backtracked hastily, grimmacing at how harsh he’d sounded, both in words and tone. “Why did you come here to sleep?”

Baekhyun stared at him from the spot on the bed where he was still lying, eyes tired yet unreadable. Sehun was tired of always trying to search for answers in Baekhyun’s indiscernible expressions, sick of reading too much into Baekhyun’s every behaviour only to inevitably end up feeling small and dumb and slighted when none of it added up in his brain.

“Are you mad I came?” Baekhyun’s voice was unexpectedly clear, only softened round the corners with something that sounded strangely like sadness.

“No,” Sehun said, replying way too quickly. He wasn’t lying.

Baekhyun sat up and brought his knees to chest, resting his chin on them. The mechanical puffing of the humidifier, the gentle luminescence of the blue light that was enveloping the both of them in dark, strange shadows, the sight of Baekhyun sitting in the middle of Sehun’s bed, so tiny and drawing unto himself…

Sehun’s mind whirred. He’d been awake for too long, and this was all beginning to feel like a lucid dream—

“No,” He repeated, and before he could change his mind, the words came tumbling out of his mouth. “But what are you trying to do, hyung?”

Sehun tried not to breathe too heavily as he waited for Baekhyun to reply, but he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyhow; the rush of blood to his head sounded like a roar in his ears.

“I’m trying to sleep,” Baekhyun said, so low that Sehun almost missed it. He tilted his head to rest one cheek on his kneecap and gazed up at Sehun. “I can’t seem to fall asleep in my room. Your room seems so much more effective.”

Sehun’s throat tightened.

“Not that,” he replied, not unkindly. “I wasn’t talking about that.”

Gingerly, he lowered himself back onto the bed, shifting in so that only a hair’s breadth separated the two of them.

“I’m glad you can fall asleep here,” Sehun whispered. A tenderness which he hadn’t known had been hiding deep inside him for so long came rushing out all at once. Reaching out, he guided Baekhyun’s head to rest on his shoulder. Sehun’s fingers, quick to betray him, were already spreading themselves out to comb through Baekhyun’s hair at the crown of his head.

Sehun had not quite predicted the way Baekhyun would reciprocate.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyun said, abruptly, and Sehun barely had a moment to register that his shoulder was cold, yet again, before Baekhyun was looking at him square in the face, lips parted just a fraction and breathing warm air against Sehun’s nose, chin, lips—

And then they were kissing. A trickle of contact at first, like two strangers getting acquainted, before it descended into a mild fumbling of lips on lips and lips on teeth, and drowsy, surprised breaths melding to form a single inextricable atmosphere between the two of them.

Sehun had his eyes squeezed so tightly shut that he could see phosphenes dancing at the back of his eyelids.

He was terrified to open them and even more terrified to stop, but most of all he was terrified at how much he didn’t want to. So he let Baekhyun take the lead, moving his body accordingly, but he pushed back at the same time too, taking in whatever he wanted, sucking gently yet hungrily on Baekhyun’s lower lip with the thought that he was never going to get this chance again humming at the back of his mind.

Baekhyun snapped away as abruptly as he had initiated contact.

“Stop,” Baekhyun inhaled, voice sharp and breathless. “—We shoud stop.”

The rush of disappointment that Sehun felt at those words, coming as they were right after the dizzying surreality of the last few seconds, made a lump jump to his throat. Familiar sensations, of confusion and uncertainty and being rendered insignificant, swelled within him like a rolling wave.

It seemed like Baekhyun had caught on, because it was now his turn to card his fingers through Sehun’s hair. Sehun’s heart was about to give out from the emotional whiplash of this entire experience.

“I’m not doing this just for fun,” Baekhyun said. “Please don’t misunderstand.”

Sehun was suddenly drained of all energy. “I don’t understand.”

What remained of the distance between them closed as Baekhyun leaned forward to rest his forehead on Sehun’s shoulder. Warmth enveloped Sehun as Baekhyun’s arms, blue and fleece-y, rose to wrap themselves around his neck.

Baekhyun was so soft and so comfortable and so cruel, and staring straight ahead with Baekhyun nestled against him, Sehun found himself fighting back the tears that had sprung to his eyes. He felt like if he just closed them he would drop off to sleep, right there and then, so he did.

He swayed on the spot a little.

“Sehun?” Baekhyun straightened away from him to ask. “Are you okay?”

Sehun snapped his eyes open. He was seized by the desire to burst out laughing. Really? Baekhyun was asking that? Instead, it escaped him as a half-whispered snort.

Baekhyun shook back the sleeves of his jumper to reveal his hands, which he then used to grab Sehun’s.

“Sehun,” he said. Somehow it sounded like a question again. Sehun didn’t trust himself to respond.

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

Sehun’s gaze flickered to Baekhyun’s face; he recognised the exhaustion there that he felt in his own bones. Quietly, he nodded.

“Can I… sleep here tonight?”

Sehun surprised himself with his own answer. “Yes.”

Wordlessly, the two of them arranged themselves under the covers. Flat on his back, Sehun stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, feeling sleep beginning to tug on his eyelids.

Fingers laced themselves through those of Sehun’s left hand. “I really want to talk to you tomorrow, okay?” Baekhyun’s voice was drowsy, but Sehun could somehow tell he was being sincere.

At least, he hoped so. He really hoped it wasn’t his fatigue doing things to his imagination.

“Sleep well, hyung.” Sehun murmured, and as his eyelids shuttered close, he settled into the fuzzy sensation of Baekhyun drawing close and nuzzling his head into Sehun’s arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this accompanied by a backdrop of suho’s let’s love, baek’s bungee, & ksoo’s that’s okay and the way the three songs vibed together is this fic’s mood


End file.
